Chapter 105 - 78 : Warning ? (2)

Chapter 105: Chapter 78 : Warning ? (2)

Ethan crouched beside the nearest body and placed his palm against the man’s chest. The Blood Seed stirred almost immediately, and a familiar pull spread through Ethan’s body as the blood within the corpse began to move. It seeped from the wounds and beneath the skin, drawn inward toward Ethan instead of spilling onto the ground.

The corpse twitched faintly.

Then it became still.

Warmth slowly left the body as the remaining vitality followed the blood, drawn out little by little. Ethan closed his eyes and felt it entering him, the Blood Seed drawing in what remained and refining it together with the faint traces of Qi still lingering within the cultivator’s body. A steady warmth spread through Ethan as the process continued, leaving the corpse colder and lighter with every passing moment.

The man’s skin gradually lost its color. His cheeks sank, the flesh tightening against the bones as more of what had once given the body its fullness was drawn away.

When Ethan finished, he moved to the next body.

Then another.

He drained each one completely, taking whatever blood and vitality could still be used instead of leaving it behind. By the time he reached the last corpse, the bodies scattered across the ground had changed so much that they barely looked like people who had died only moments ago. Their skin had drawn tightly against their bones, their faces hollow and sunken, their limbs thin and stiff.

They looked almost like ancient mummies, as though they had been left to dry beneath the sun for decades.

Ethan stood and looked across the ravine. He made no attempt to hide what he had done. The bodies were meant to be found, unlike those from the previous groups, which he had buried to keep their deaths from leaving an obvious trail back to him. This time, there was no reason for that caution. He wanted someone to find them.

If someone found these bodies, they would see what had happened. The state they were left in would make it difficult to dismiss the survivor’s account as an exaggeration, while the sight itself would leave a clear impression on anyone who came looking afterward. Ethan had spent enough time hiding what happened after the earlier encounters. This time, he had no intention of doing the same. If they wanted to call him a blood demon, then perhaps it was time they had something to justify the name.

With the fight over, Ethan’s attention naturally turned to the bodies. It was time to see what they had been carrying.

He crouched beside the nearest one, and a small sense of anticipation stirred within him. There was always something to discover, perhaps a few useful cultivation resources, some spirit stones, or something he hadn’t seen before. The thought brought a faint lift to his mood.

At the first, as someone who had once lived on Earth, a modern society with values about fear and respect towards the dead, searching a corpse had not been easy for him. There had always been a moment of hesitation when he reached for someone who had been alive only moments earlier, even knowing that someone wouldn’t have hesitated to put him down instead.

But the longer he thought about it, the more he understood that leaving useful resources behind simply because they belonged to the dead served no purpose. And this wasn’t Earth to begin with, the cultivation world works on its on law : Plundering.

So he came to terms with it gradually as these people had chosen to come after his life in the first place and once the fight was over, it was only right to take what they had brought with them as part of surviving.

With enough encounters, that hesitation had slowly faded into something more familiar.

As he searched the corpses once more, taking whatever useful resources remained. There were a few coins and some cultivation items, but nothing that made staying worthwhile. He stored them away with the rest of what he had collected during the journey, and for a moment, he couldn’t help noticing how much heavier his reserves had become. He had long since stopped keeping track of everything he had accumulated from these profit-driven cultivators who had came after him.

He adjusted the storage pouch at his waist and looked east. The road continued toward Lunar Echo territory, and Ethan stepped over one of the bodies before leaving the ravine behind.

Branches whipped past him.

He ducked beneath one, nearly losing his footing as another snapped against his shoulder. His breath tore through his throat, coming faster and harder with every step. Leaves and dry twigs cracked beneath his boots as he pushed through the undergrowth, stumbling forward without slowing.

Something caught his sleeve.

He ripped free.

A branch struck his cheek, leaving a sharp sting across his skin, but he barely noticed. His chest was burning. His legs were beginning to ache. Still, he ran.

He didn’t dare look back.

Another root caught his foot.

He stumbled forward, nearly falling, then threw out a hand and caught himself against a tree. For half a heartbeat he stood there, gasping, before fear surged through him again.

He pushed away from the trunk and kept running.

The trees blurred around him. Wind rushed past his ears, mixing with the pounding of his heartbeat until he could barely hear anything else. Every crack of a branch behind him made his body tense, and every shadow between the trees looked like something following.

He ran until his lungs burned.

Only when the trees behind him had disappeared into the distance did his pace finally falter.

He slowed, then stopped.

His hands went to his knees as he bent forward, dragging in deep breaths. His chest heaved violently, and sweat ran down the side of his face.

His hands remained braced against his knees as he dragged in another breath, then another. His chest rose and fell heavily, each breath still rough from the run. Sweat trickled down his face, and his fingers trembled slightly as he slowly straightened himself. The trees around him were quiet now, with no footsteps or shouting, nothing to suggest that anyone had followed. He looked back through the gaps between the trees, but nothing moved. Only then did some of the tension begin to leave his body, though his mind remained caught in what he had just escaped.

What he had seen before running came back to him in fragments : the bodies lying across the ground, the blood, and their leader still fighting. Their leader’s breathing had grown heavier, his movements slower with every exchange, while the other man continued to move with the same frightening calmness. He had known what was coming. He had seen enough to know that their leader was going to lose, but knowing it and accepting it were two different things.

Their leader was an Early Qi Refining cultivator. He had always thought of that realm as something far above himself. Someone at that level was strong, someone who could stand against other cultivators and survive, someone whose death was difficult to imagine. Yet he had watched their leader being pushed toward the edge of defeat as though there was nothing he could do about it. His throat tightened as the weight of that realization settled in.

He hadn’t stayed to see the end. He had already been running by then, but he didn’t need to see it. The way that man had fought had told him enough. Their leader was going to die, and the man facing him hadn’t even looked like he was struggling. The memory settled deeper : the speed, the calmness, the complete lack of panic. It was as though the man had never considered their leader a real threat.

His breathing caught. If that man had been fighting seriously from the beginning...

He didn’t let himself finish the thought. He looked back again, but there was still nothing behind him. Even so, his skin crawled as though that terrifying figure might suddenly appear between the trees, and he quickly turned away. The bounty and the spirit stones were already beyond his reach now; there was no longer any way for him to claim them. All that remained was the fear that had taken hold of him and the certainty that he needed to get as far away from that man as he could.

But he had something else.

Information.

The thought came to him as he looked toward the distant city. He might have lost the bounty, but he had survived the encounter, and that alone was worth something. More importantly, he now knew something that the others chasing the reward did not. He had seen what that man was capable of, and he knew that the notice had seriously underestimated him.

Information like that had value, especially when the man in question was carrying a bounty of one hundred and fifty spirit stones. The others would keep coming, believing they knew what they were hunting. He was one of the few who now knew better.

His fear hadn’t disappeared, but it no longer felt as though he had escaped with nothing.

He had survived.

And he had something worth selling.

With that thought settling in his mind, he turned toward the city and started walking